


Guardian of Fear

by StrongandFree



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Child Neglect, Distant Parents, Gen, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Sort Of, author is very bad at summaries, except these are teenagers, might fuck around and make this longer, pitch helps children, rated teen for the swearing these teens do, so pitch adopts them all, teenagers need help too, the guardians suck, the guardians totally ditch kids above the age of 10 you can't change my mind, whoops my hand slipped
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2020-07-03
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:34:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25055521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StrongandFree/pseuds/StrongandFree
Summary: A healthy dose of fear is always good for the system. In fact, there are a lot of good uses for fear. Without it a person usually ends up in a very avoidable situation had they used a bit more common sense.That being said, Pitch runs into a strange girl with a mild case of insomnia and makes it his mission to help her and her friends. Because being older doesn't mean that you don't need help. And if the guardians won't do it then he'll do it himself. It wasn't like he had anyone else to talk to.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 25





	Guardian of Fear

It was dark again. Finally, he could pace the empty streets without the constant irritation that always accompanied the golden dust that gifted pleasant dreams. All the children would be sleeping peacefully in their beds, eagerly awaiting what tomorrow would bring. A white smile leered from the darkness. His timing was perfect.

They thought they could repress him? Him, the embodiment of fear? He laughed to himself as the moon hid away behind the darkened clouds. How foolish they all were. There will always be children afraid of the dark and many more afraid of what lurks in it. No matter how hard they tried they could never get rid of him.

  
Though he no longer had an army of nightmares he could still sense the childrens’ fears as they lay sleeping. Most of them were the usual fears that every child had. Without his constant presence the children must have grown complacent and cheerful. How dull. His smile diminished somewhat, though he reminded himself that he couldn’t be picky. At least it would be easy work.

  
Out of the corner of his eye, a light flickered from an upstairs bedroom window. Someone was awake, he realized with a thrill. The fear of a child awake could be a powerful thing if used correctly. With practiced ease, he slipped into the shadows and entered the child’s room. The darkness eagerly danced around him as his eyes locked on the child’s back.

  
He stopped short and let the shadows in the darkened room return to normal. To his disappointment, it wasn’t a young child, but a teenager laying on the bottom of her bed with her feet lazily dangling over the edge. He could still work with this. Teenagers were harder to scare, but it would be worth the power that came from the older fear. Teenagers weren’t like children who were scared of what their own minds conjured up. They were like adults who were more practical, supposedly. Their fear though ran much deeper than the surface level fears of a child. He prepared to reach for the shadows once again, but paused.

  
This wasn’t right at all. The girl was watching what he recognized as a horror film. At least, the onscreen people were screaming as if it were a horror film. Normally this would fill him with delight. Horror films had been an unexpected source of power for him in recent years, scaring countless people and reigniting their old fear of the dark. However this girl almost looked… bored. As if to confirm this the girl groaned, her head flopping forwards and her wild mess of hair covering her face.

  
“If you’re going to walk down the dark hallway at least bring a weapon!” the girl announced loudly, nearly startling the dumbstruck boogeyman as she glared at the television set as if it had personally offended her. Maybe it had, it was hard to tell. He glanced from the horror film to the girl, who’s accent sounded surprisingly Scottish, though not nearly as thick as some that he’d heard before. She surprised him again when she pulled out a phone, though what kind he couldn’t say. Humans were developing technology at an almost obnoxiously fast pace and he couldn’t be bothered to even try and keep up.

  
The girl held the phone up to her ear for a few seconds, her feet tapping together as she waited for someone to answer. Whoever it was picked up quickly because she rapidly launched into a rant, waving her free hand around wildly as she spoke. “Listen to the utter buffoonery of these people!” She declared, telling the other person about the sheer stupidity that the characters in her film were exhibiting. Listening to her rant, he found himself agreeing. What kind of moron decides to go upstairs when they’ve been told that’s where their attacker is?

  
“At least bring something stronger than a poker,” he muses, nearly at the same time as the teenager. She paused, her mouth slowly closing as her head turned to stare at him. Not in his direction. At him. He blinked in surprise as she made eye contact with him. She swore loudly and immediately rolled off her bed and grabbed what looked like a chemistry textbook.

  
“Who the fuck are you and how the hell did you get in my room?” She demanded.

  
Unfortunately his brain was still attempting to catch up to the current scenario. “You can see me?” he asked in disbelief.

  
That apparently wasn’t what she expected him to say either because she hesitated. “Uh… yeah? It’s not like you were hiding? Dude you’re standing right next to my lamp of course I can fucking see you.” The person on the other end of the line must’ve said something because she pulled the phone away from her ear and took a picture of him. The flash startled him and he stumbled backwards, rubbing at his eyes.

  
“You dare-” his threat was cut off when he saw that she had used his brief distraction to set down the phone and pick up a small spray bottle.

  
“Come any closer to me and I’ll spray you in the eyes and trust me this shit hurts,” she threatened, “come closer after that and I’ll give you a concussion because textbooks are heavy and I carry at least three in my bag at all times so you’d better believe I can swing this bitch at full force.” Once again, he found himself staring at this girl in surprise. She could see him; and yet the only fear he had sensed from her was her initial reaction to seeing him. Most humans would have screamed and attempted to run upon seeing him, and here she was threatening him with a household object and a high school book.

  
The television set took the moment of brief silence to scream as the character brutally attacked the man attempting to get to her. The girl scowled. “Shut UP, Jess!” The character, of course, paid her no mind and continued to scream, because she was in a television set and the irritated Scottish girl did not have the power to get the attention of imaginary characters.

  
A digital voice came from her phone, but the volume was too quiet for him to hear from the other side of the room. Whatever it was startled the girl because she gave her phone a concerned glance. “What do you mean: ‘You can’t see anyone?’” she demanded, “There’s a guy who looks paler than that one Twilight-sparkle guy standing in my room!”

  
He took offense to this, he did not sparkle thank you very much. He scowled at her, deciding that this had gone on for long enough. “I am the Boogeyman!” he declared, lifting his hands to increase the room’s shadows to really show her who she was dealing with, “and I will not be belittled by a teenager who shouts at her television set!”

  
The girl paused and tilted her head, as if she were considering his words. If possible, she almost looked less frightened of him now. “Ok hey,” she started, “you didn’t have to come into my house just to call me out like this.” She paused and ignored his flabbergasted look in favor of listening to the person on the other end of her phone. The shadows plopped back into their original positions and sulked. “Why can you hear him but not see him?” she asked her phone. She looked back at him. “Why can’t they see you?”

  
“I- they can… hear me?” The girl watched almost hesitantly as he had a small existential crisis. Two people in one night who were aware of him. True, most people could hear him but only when they were already frightened and only when he was closest to them. This person could hear him over a phone; and this girl was definitely still pointing her makeshift weapons at him warningly.

  
“You ok Mr. Boogeyman, dude?” She asked, lowering her chemistry book. Not very far though, she would still be able to swing it at a moment’s notice. “Wait what the fuck did I just say, are you actually the boogeyman or are you insane?” The phone person must’ve berated her for that question because she gave her phone a positively offended look. “It’s a valid thing to ask! The boogeyman is a child’s story or something.” Her voice trailed off at the end of her sentence and she looked very unsure of herself.

  
He opened his mouth to speak, and hesitated. Here he was standing in a teenager’s room acting like one of those guardians talking to one of their believers. How pathetic. His lip began to curl until he realized: she was a believer. She had to be how else could she see him? When was the last time someone had seen him and hadn’t ran away on sight? Never, when he thought about it. True he fed on fear but he had never taken more than he needed. At least in the beginning. Then the guardians had come and instead of speaking to him like he had expected they had turned on him and cast him out. They were afraid of him. ~~He was tired of being alone~~.

  
“My name is Pitch Black,” he introduced, speaking slowly, “but the children all call me the Boogeyman.”

  
The girl nodded. “Ok.” After another second she said it again. “Ok. Ok ok. Cool. Cool cool.” She continued nodding. The textbook was set down, but the spray bottle was not. Her now free hand was used to brush her untamed hair out of her face and pick up her phone again. “Yeah it’s all good no need to call the cops.” She paused for the other person to speak. “I mean he did just appear in my room so chances are he’s some kind of demon and he hasn’t killed me yet so-” she shrugged, apparently forgetting that the person couldn’t see her, “We all die you either kill yourself or you get killed. What you gonna do?” She paused again, blinking slowly at Pitch as she listened to the other person speak for a while. “Alright,” she pulled the phone away from her ear slightly, “Jackie says if I’m not at school tomorrow they’re going to hunt you down for sport and rip your limbs off and let you slowly bleed out to avenge me.”

  
Pitch, for the manyeth time that night, found himself gaping at the girl who had just casually relayed a threat to him. Would this strange girl never cease in her surprises, he wondered. “I see,” he responded, too dumbstruck to say much of anything else.

  
“Great, I think that means he won’t kill me. See you tomorrow!” She hung up the phone and tossed it on her bed, grabbing a remote and pressing a button to rewind her movie back to where it had been before he startled her. Her face immediately scrunched up and she began swearing at the television set. “No, you complete and utter fool! That’s not how you use a weapon!”

  
“Why do you watch this if all you’re going to do is scream at the television?” Pitch asked her, eyeing her warily. He had no idea teenagers swore so much.  
She shrugged. “I like horror films,” she explained, “but this one is particularly bad. It’s supposed to be a series or something. Want to watch the next one with me?” He gave her yet another startled look. She caught his look and shrugged again. “What? I’m bored and I need someone to get mad with me at these films. Jackie goes to sleep early and I think I woke them up.” She turned back to the television and drew her legs up so she was sitting cross legged. “Besides, you look kind of lonely.” Her last sentence was said so quietly that he nearly didn’t hear it. “Oh!” she exclaimed before he could refute the statement, “I’m Lizzie by the way! Sorry, I forgot to introduce myself.”

  
She held her hand out for him to shake, her mouth twisting upwards into an awkward sideways smile. Pitch glanced at her hand for a second, then slowly took it and shook. “Hello Lizzie.” The next few minutes were filled with an awkward silence and the screams of the idiotic fictional character on the television.

  
“You can sit down if you want, just saying.” Pitch glanced at Lizzie before accepting her offer. She was a very strange girl, he decided as the next horror movie played and Lizzie got continuously more frustrated with the characters. Her voice was very loud and it occasionally grated on his ears. Still, he thought to himself as he found himself sparingly engaging in her beration, it was better than being alone.

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, thanks for reading! I hope you guys enjoyed! I don't often post my writing anywhere so I'm actually a bit nervous but I'm also very bored and very tired so right now those are winning out over anxiety. I may be updating in the future but I'm not sure how long this will end up being because right now I'm just having fun with it.  
> Have a nice day!  
> (Also I apologize about the terrible summary my mind shorted out and I didn't know what to write.)


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